CHAPTER XXVIII.

Disappointment of England-The Washington Treaty-General Cass resigns his Mission-The Correspondence-England's Construction of the Treaty.

The British government, having failed to secure the approval of its scheme by the Chamber of Deputies, was anxious to retreat with some appearance of honor; and disdaining to appear before the world as entirely unsuccessful in her project, coupled with the wish to impress the other great powers with her sincerity and laudable motives in suggesting the quintuple treaty, sought an opportunity to open a negotiation relative to the slave trade with the United States. With this view, Lord Ashburton was sent as a special ambassador to Washington, clad with authority to adjust and definitely settle all matters of difference between the two countries.

The negotiation was opened between his lordship and Mr. Webster, the Secretary of State, and a treaty concluded. Mr. Webster, in communicating this treaty to General Cass, in France, called his attention particularly to the clauses relating to the suppression of the African slave trade. The provisions of the treaty, in relation to this branch of the negotiation, did not meet with the views of General Cass. He considered the omission to procure a renunciation of the offensive claim of England to the right of search, while engaged on this very subject, placed him in a false position, and rendered his situation, as Minister to France, unpleasant.

With powers of mind which grasp, as it were, by intuition, every subject to which they are applied, united to various and extensive acquirements, he had exposed the mischief that lurked in the quintuple treaty; he had shown that the whole eastern coast of America, south of the thirty-second degree of north latitude, came within its gigantic sweep. No vessel of the contracting parties could ever have been approaching New York, Boston, Philadelphia, or Charleston, with a cargo from any part of the world, south of Savannah, without risk of being searched for slaves by British cruisers, the voyage stopped, and the vessel ordered to some British

Court of Admiralty for adjudication. Almost beyond credibility, yet the words of the treaty prove it. The space for British search comprehended more than seventy degrees of latitude. Nay; it might have been exercised upon all the vessels going to or from New Orleans, in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. What a blow to commercial pursuits was happily warded off by the bold and unprecedented movement of General Cass! He, by the stroke of his pen, as it were, foreclosed British supremacy on the high seas, and barred the door against her fanaticism there, that she might do her work more thoroughly and quickly on the land. He thus exposed himself to the wildest anti-slavery fanaticism of England, in the enlightened and fearless vindication of the rights of his country, and was showered with calumnies by the tory press of Britain and defamatory peers in Parliament. Lord Brougham was mad with rage at the defeat of this portentous treaty by the talents, sagacity, and patriotism of General Cass. He thundered from the tory benches, and exhausted the vocabularies of Johnson and Walker. And notwithstanding the American Minister had thus successfully performed his duty as an American Minister should have done, and that, too, without feeling, at the time, that any very especial credit was due to his patriotism, and was thus exposed to the growl and roar of the British lion, still, it turned out, in the sequel, that he was not to escape indignity and injustice from his own government, in the person of Daniel Webster, the Secretary of State. The proof is on record, or we might want faith in such a charge. It is contained in the correspondence between Mr. Webster and himself, transpiring after his return from France; but never was retribution sooner brought about, as far as the parties were concerned, and his own victory over Mr. Webster was complete. No two judgments can differ about this. The necessity that created this correspondence was the more painful to General Cass, because they were classmates in youth at Exeter, and always retaining for each other sentiments of respect and friendship; indeed, each wishing for the other a prosperous voyage through life. Years afterwards, in personal intercourse, General Cass, from some remarks made by Mr. Webster, was led to doubt whether the latter did not, in all this matter, act from the promptings of others. Suffice it to say, that cordial intimacy between them was re-established, and continued unbroken to the day of Mr. W.'s death; and the eulogy pronounced by General

Cass in the Senate, upon the death of Mr. Webster, evidences the warm personal sentiments he entertained towards him. The flame that illumined the matchless intellect of the one, is already extinguished in the silence of death; and that of the other, in the ordinary course of nature, must, ere long, partake of the same destiny. And were it not necessary to a just appreciation of General Cass' position and subsequent action relative to the Ashburton treaty, so called, the following letters would be omitted. As it is, we reproduce them. There would be a hiatus without them.

"SIR:-The last packet brought me your letter of August 29th, announcing the conclusion of a treaty with Great Britain, and accompanied by a copy of it, and of the correspondence between the ministers charged with the negotiations, and directing me to make known to Mr. Guizot the sentiments of the American government upon that part of the treaty which provides for the cooperation of the United States in the efforts making to suppress the African slave trade. I thought I should best fulfill your intentions by communicating a copy, in extenso, of your letter. This I accordingly did yesterday. I trust I shall be able, before my departure, to transmit to you the acknowledgment of its receipt by Mr. Guizot.

"In executing this duty, I felt too well what was due to my government and country to intimate any regret to a foreign power that some declaration had not preceded the treaty, or some stipulation accompanied it, by which the extraordinary pretension of Great Britain, to search our ships at all times and in all places, first put forth to the world by Lord Palmerston the 27th of August, 1841, and on the 13th October following again peremptorily claimed as a right by Lord Aberdeen, would have been abrogated as equally incompatible with the laws of nations, and with the independence of the United States. I confined myself, therefore, to a simple communication of your letter.

"But this reserve ceases when I address my own government, and connected as I feel my official conduct and reputation with this question of the right of search. I am sure I shall find an excuse for what might otherwise be considered presumption, if, as one of the last acts of my official career, I submit to you, and

through you to the President, the peculiar circumstances in which I am placed by the conclusion of this treaty, and by the communication of your letter to Mr. Guizot.

"Before proceeding further, permit me to remark that no one rejoices more sincerely than I do at the termination of our difficulties with Great Britain, so far as they are terminated. That country and ours have so many moral and material interests involved in their intercourse, that their respective governments and inhabitants may well feel more than ordinary solicitude for the preservation of peace between these two great nations. Our past history, however, will be unprofitable, if it do not teach us that unjust pretensions, affecting our rights and honor, are best met by being promptly repelled when first urged, and by being received in a spirit of resistance, worthy the character of our people, and of the great trust confided to us as the depositories of the freest system of government which the world has yet witnessed.

"I had the honor, in my letter of the 17th ultimo, to solicit permission to return to the United States. That letter was written the day a copy of the treaty reached Paris; and the remark which I then made to you, that I could no longer be useful here,' has been confirmed by subsequent reflection, and by the receipt of your letter, and of the correspondence accompanying it. I feel that I could no longer remain here honorably for myself, or advantageously for our country.

"In my letter to you, of the 15th February last, transmitting & copy of my protest against the ratification of the quintuple treaty for the suppression of the African slave trade, I took the liberty of suggesting the propriety of demanding from Lord Ashburton, previously to entering into any negotiation, a distinct renunciation of this claim to search our vessels. I thought then, as I do now, that this course was demanded by a just self-respect, and would be supported by that tribunal of public opinion which sustains our government when right, and corrects it when wrong. The pretension itself was one of the most flagrant outrages which could be aimed at an independent nation; and the mode of its enunciation was as coolly contemptuous as diplomatic ingenuity could suggest. We were told that to the doctrine that American vessels were free from the search of foreign cruisers in time of peace, the British government never could or would subscribe;'

and we were told, too, there was reason to expect that the United States would themselves become converts to the same opinion; and this expectation was founded on the hope that they would cease to confound two things which are in their nature entirely different, and would look to things and not to words.' And the very concluding paragraph of the British correspondence tells us, in effect, that, take whatever course we may please, England will adhere to this pretension to board our vessels when and where her cruisers may find them. A portion of this paragraph is equally significant and unceremonious. It is for the American government,' says Lord Aberdeen, alone to determine what may be due to a just regard for their national dignity and national independence.' I doubt if, in the wide range of modern diplomacy, a more obnoxious claim has been urged in a more obnoxious

manner.

"This claim, thus asserted and supported, was promptly met and firmly repelled by the President, in his message at the commencement of the last session of Congress; and in your letter to me, approving the course I had adopted in relation to the question of the ratification by France of the quintuple treaty, you consider the principles of that message as the established policy of the government. Under these circumstances of the assertion and denial of this new claim of maritime police, the eyes of Europe were upon these two great naval powers, one of which had advanced a pretension, and avowed her determination to enforce it, which might at any moment bring them into collision. So far our national dignity was uncompromised.

"But England then urged the United States to enter into a conventional arrangement by which we might be pledged to concur with her in measures for the suppression of the slave trade. Till then we had executed our own laws in our own way. But yielding to this application, and departing from our former principle of avoiding European combinations upon subjects not American, we stipulated, in a solemn treaty, that we would carry into effect our own laws, and fixed the minimum force we would employ for that purpose. Certainly, a laudable desire to terminate this horrible man-stealing and man-selling, may well justify us in going further in changing one of the fundamental principles of our policy, in order to effect this object, than we would go to effect any other. It is so much more a question of feeling than of reasoning, that